Philips Wouwerman

Robert White;
His sale et al., London, Christie's, 16 February 1861, lot 105, 31 Guineas to Graves (as Hackaart);
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 25 April 2001, lot 14;
Where acquired by the present owner.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Philips Wouwerman. Landscape with a Stag Hunt. Signed with a monogram PLs W at lower right. This painting is on a small oak panel with wide bevelling all round, which has clearly always remained perfectly flat and stable. A minute craquelure can just be seen in the darks of the trees. There has been a quite recent restoration, but the painting appears to have had a calm background with little trace of wear or sign of past disturbance. There are a few minor little retouchings in the sky, visible under ultra violet light: two in the upper centre with one tiny touch above and occasional minute lines along the grain nearer the upper left. The light in the upper right sky and on the skyline above the trees is extraordinarily pure. The delicate detail of the hunt is extremely fine, including the receding landscape and the minuscule action in the gleaming watery foreground on the left and the sunlit horsemen. There are just minimal rare retouches but essentially this painting is in exceptionally intact condition. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Landscapes with hunting scenes formed a staple throughout Wouwerman's career, and were foremost among the works upon which his contemporary and later fame rested. Hofstede de Groot listed some forty-four works incorporating a stag hunt,¹ of which seventeen autograph works are identified in Birgit Schumacher's catalogue published in 2006.²  The imprecise descriptions of many hunting scenes in early sources, however, makes it very difficult to identify an early history for the present panel. It may perhaps be the 'Stag Hunt' listed by Hofstede de Groot in the sale of the collection of Jan de Gise in Bonn on 30 August 1742, lot 105 (478 florins).³ This was on a panel of very similar dimensions (13 by 16 inches) but the description in the sale catalogue – Eine Hirsch-Jagd. original vom Wovermans [sic] – is too vague to allow for certainty.

Wouwerman used this small cabinet format for other depictions of stag hunts, both on copper and on panel. These include, for example, the copper sold in these Rooms 12 December 2002, lot 26, and that today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, both of slightly smaller dimensions.⁴ It is very difficult to establish a chronology for Wouwerman's œuvre as so few of his pictures are dated. The earliest recorded dated example of a stag hunt is that of 1651 recorded in the von Hirsch collection in 1863, but this is now lost and neither its medium or size are known.⁵ The form of his monogram used here seems to have been adopted only after 1646, and this panel may date from the following decade.

1. C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth century, vol. II, London 1909, pp. 444–52, nos. 614–635e. 

2. B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668). The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, 2 vols., Doornspijk 2006, pp. 228–36, cat. nos. A147–A164.

3. Hofstede de Groot, 1909, p. 450, no. 630f. G. Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderijn, The Hague 1752-1770, vol. II, p. 64.

4. Inv. SK-A-480, 28 by 34 cm. Schumacher 2006, no. A147, reproduced.

5. Schumacher 2006, no. B16.